 What was John the Baptist's message of repentance? When you say to people that nowhere in the Bible does it say repent of your sins to be saved they'll probably take you more often than not to John the Baptist's repentance because John the Baptist did preach repentance. So let's get started with the synoptic gospels and let's look at John the Baptist's message of repentance. In Matthew chapter 3 verses 1 and 2 it tells us in those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In Mark's account chapter 1 verse 4 it says John did baptize in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Luke chapter 3 is very similar to Mark's account and in verses 2 and 3 it tells us that the Word of God came on to John the Son of Zacharias in the wilderness and he came into all the country about Jordan preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. So we can quite clearly see that John the Baptist preached repentance okay we can see it in those verses right there yeah. So why would I then say that the Bible never says to repent of your sins when John the Baptist quite clearly preached repentance? Well the answer is simple look at those verses again and see what they actually say. Matthew chapter 3 which uses the verb form does not say repent of your sins it only says repent and then it follows this up with the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Mark's gospel uses the noun form and doesn't say repentance of or from sins it actually says repentance for the remission of sins. These additional words for the remission completely change the purpose of repentance here. Just as in Mark's gospel Luke's gospel also uses the noun form and it doesn't say repentance of or from sins rather it says repentance for the remission of sins. Once again those words for the remission affect the meaning of repentance and how it applies to our sins. So we need to understand what exactly John the Baptist meant by repenting or repentance and how this applies to the remission of sins for the forgiveness of sins if you like. Whatever repentance may mean in this narrative the forgiveness of sins is the purpose of this repentance as that is through which forgiveness is applied and is what repentance represents. Now before we explore what repentance means in this passage and how John the Baptist preached it it's important that we start here with one very very important rule. Don't just make assumptions about the repentance that John the Baptist preached. Let the Bible define repentance that John the Baptist preached. Now immediately after we are told that John the Baptist preached repentance he provides an Old Testament scriptural justification for his message. Luke's gospel account gives us the most detail about the Old Testament passage that he was quoting. In Luke chapter three verses four to six it says as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah as the prophet saying the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord and make his paths straight every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be brought low and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways shall be made smooth and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. So John is paraphrasing Isaiah chapter 40 so let's see how John's quote differs from Isaiah's quote. Now I've colored the trivial differences in red but the more crucial differences I've colored in blue. This is very important for understanding what John the Baptist means in Luke chapter three. The difference in Isaiah 40 verse three and Luke three verse four ought to show you that the Old Testament prophecy of making straight the way of our God is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. So that's quite useful to know if you need to rebuke any Jehovah's false witnesses when they're out in the street too. By the way they believe in the repent of your sins gospel to be saved even if they don't use that exact terminology. The next crucial difference is that between Luke three verse six and Isaiah 40 verse five this is very different because John the Baptist rephrases it. So notice how he ties in the glory of the Lord being revealed with the salvation of God. When people interpret John the Baptist's repentance to be about turning from sin they're telling you to look inside of yourself for salvation to look introspectively towards your own life. So they are essentially telling you that the salvation of the Lord is revealed inside of you by changing your behavior and conduct. But John the Baptist was very clear here the salvation that he's pointing to is not introspective. It's the glory of the Lord which is shown in the person of Jesus Christ and looking towards him being revealed for our salvation. It's not looking towards ourselves it's looking towards Jesus Christ. And that makes perfect sense with the previous verses in Isaiah 40 that he quotes because John himself is the voice that's crying in the wilderness you know he's making straight the paths of Christ who is the person about to be revealed. So when John says repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand he is this is who he's pointing you to he's pointing you to turn towards this coming messiah to pointing towards Jesus Christ because he's the glory of the Lord being revealed for the salvation of men and consequently the remission or the forgiveness of sins. Now let's just try and use some common sense for a moment. Okay if John the Baptist was telling people that they needed to turn from their sins for salvation and that's what they have to do to have their sins forgiven and that's the meaning of repentance. Why would John justify his message by quoting from Isaiah 40 verses three to five when he could have quoted from an abundance of Old Testament passages about turning from sin. For example John could have said as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah as the prophet saying the Redeemer shall come to Zion and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob saith the Lord this is from Isaiah 59 20 but he didn't quote this verse. John the Baptist could have said as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah as the prophet saying seek ye the Lord while he may be found call ye upon him while he is near let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon this is from Isaiah 55 6 and 7. Once again John didn't quote this. Here's another example of what John the Baptist could have said he could have said as it is written in the book of the words of Jeremy the prophet saying if so be they will harken and turn every man from his evil way the time may repent me of the evil which I purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their doings. Once again John the Baptist did not quote this verse. If John the Baptist's message of repentance was all about turning from sin why did he not quote an Old Testament passage about turning from sin or wickedness or iniquity. John had ample opportunity to quote a more appropriate verse and yet he did not exploit this opportunity. John could have even started his quote of Isaiah 40 from the previous verse even that would have made more sense according to the turn from your sins gospel message because in the previous verse it says for she has received of the Lord's hand double for her sins but once again he didn't quote this verse and so you know why didn't the Holy Spirit move John the Baptist to quote an Old Testament passage about turning from sin or wickedness at least then we would have a notable connection between his message of repentance and turning from our sins. While the answer is quite simple John was not pointing us introspectively towards our own selves in our conduct. He was pointing us towards the Christ who would fulfill Old Testament prophecies to bring salvation and forgiveness of sins to us and he called upon the people to be baptized accordingly. Now when we see baptism in the Bible we see a noticeable correlation between believing and being baptized. Here's just a couple of examples. Mark 16 16 he that believes and is baptized. Acts 8 13 Simon himself believed also and when he was baptized. Acts 8 36 to 37 what does hinder me to be baptized and Philip said if you believe with all your heart you may. Now some people might ask me about Acts 238 where it says repent and be baptized because here just like John the Baptist baptism is tied with repentance not with believing. Well I will have to answer Acts chapter 2 in detail in a separate video but long story short Christians make the same mistake with Acts 2 that they do with John the Baptist. They assume that repentance in Acts 2 means turning from sin but it doesn't. Peter already confirmed in verse 21 that it's those who call upon the name of the Lord that shall be saved. In verse 41 it was those who gladly received his word that were baptized and in verse 44 all that believed were together. There is no mention of pouring their alcohol down in the presence of the apostles or weeping over their sins. Once again baptism and repentance are tied with believing in the Christ. Now just in case you're still skeptical about this and you still think that John the Baptist repentance was about turning from sin. Well all we have to do is look at the words of Jesus himself and also the words of Paul himself and we will confirm that John the Baptist's repentance was to believe in the Christ that he was pointing to. We will just prove it right now. In Matthew 21 Jesus is talking to the chief priests and elders. Now there is a parable before this citation which I'll have to answer in a separate video but for now let's look briefly at how Jesus understood the repentance of John the Baptist which he's referring to here. He says John came onto you in the way of righteousness and you believed him not but the publicans and harlots believed him and when you had seen it repented not afterward that you might believe him. Jesus made it very very obvious to the chief priests and elders at the temple here that the publicans and harlots going to the kingdom because they believed the message of John the Baptist whereas the chief priests and elders did not repent that is to say they didn't believe the message of John the Baptist. Jesus did not say in this passage you did believe the message of John the Baptist but wouldn't turn from your sins whereas the publicans and harlots believed and turned from their sins. It just doesn't say that. So that's how Jesus understood the message but let's look at Paul as another witness just to strengthen our case. In Acts chapter 19 verse 4 Paul was speaking to some disciples at Ephesus and said John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance saying unto the people that they should believe on him which should come after him that is on Christ Jesus. Both Matthew chapter 21 32 and Acts chapter 19 4 prove without a shadow of the doubt that the message of repentance that John the Baptist preached was to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ that he was pointing people towards and he uses an Old Testament verse or passage rather to justify that very message. Anybody who tries to redefine John the Baptist's repentance as turning from sin they are calling Jesus a liar in Matthew 21 and they are accusing Paul of being mistaken in Acts chapter 19 so they better be very very careful. To further qualify this although both Jesus and Paul understood John's message of repentance to mean believing on the Christ that should come after him. In Matthew 3 Mark 1 and Luke 3 John never actually uses the word believe. We do not have a verbatim quote of him telling people to believe on Jesus in these three passages. Why is this important? Well if the repentance that John the Baptist preached was about turning from sin then anybody that turned from their sin and was baptized by John could have received eternal life even without believing on Jesus. Now you don't have to be a very knowledgeable Christian to understand how absurd that is okay that John could have said hey Jesus coming everybody so turn from your sins and get baptized and we're all good okay with no mention of believing on him or trusting in him for salvation I mean that's just absurd isn't it? The commandment to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as a requirement for eternal life is encapsulated in the command to repent because as per Matthew 21 32 and Acts chapter 19 verse 4 and as justified by John's Old Testament references that is what John is telling them to do when he says repent. Now somebody will then say to me well when they got baptized they confessed their sins so that right there is proof that he told them to repent of his sins. Well if you think that then you should go back to elementary school or primary school and learn how to read okay because let's look at what it does say and what it does not say. So we're told in Matthew 3 and Mark 1 that when they were baptized of him in the Jordan they were confessing their sins. Now then if your school teacher taught you how to understand English you should have no problem understanding these verses. The Bible does say they confessed their sins but the Bible does not say that they repented of their sins or that they foresuck their sins or that they turned from their sins or even that they were cleansed from their sins or that they were set free or delivered from their sins or that they demonstrated their repentance before John would baptize them. The Bible doesn't say anything like that. To confess basically means to acknowledge or admit. So normally when people think of confession they think of verbal confession and so they wonder do I have to verbally confess sins to have forgiveness of sins for salvation. But that is kind of redundant and rather unnecessary in the sense that Jesus told many people to believe in him in John's Gospel without telling them specifically to confess their sins. But there is a reason why the Bible is telling us that they confess their sins here though. You see John the Baptist's baptism was very specific. He needed to know who to baptize. Those who would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ he was pointing them towards and who not to baptize. Now if Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins and he came to bring forgiveness of sins it would be rather redundant to believe on him as the Christ if we don't admit or acknowledge that we have sin. Okay you know if these people didn't sin what would they need this Jesus or this Christ Messiah figure for? Why would they need him for forgiveness? If they don't have sin it doesn't really matter whether they believe on Christ or not. So confession is kind of like a litmus test that John could use to determine who acknowledged their sin and would trust in this Messiah to deliver them and grant them forgiveness from their sins and who wouldn't and so he would know whether to baptize them or not. He could only make that assessment based on what they confessed to him. Now in the case of the Pharisees and Sadducees we might assume that John knew that they wouldn't confess their sins and this is hinted at in other passages in the Bible. So for example in John 9 34 the Pharisees refused to be lectured by somebody they perceived to be born in sin. In John chapter 8 many Jews denied being in bondage to any man autism because they thought they were of Abraham's seed and even John the Baptist said to them you know in this passage here think not to say within yourselves we have Abraham our father right? And the Pharisees accused Jesus of being a sinner for healing on the Sabbath and accused him of dining with sinners. There may have been Pharisees present in Luke 13 assuming that certain Galileans or the victims of Silo were greater sinners than others. So this is perhaps why John the Baptist said to the Pharisees oh generation of vipers who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Now people might be a bit confused why John said this. Perhaps another way of paraphrasing this would be like saying what are you even doing here? Why bother coming to this place? Now Jesus further qualifies this in Matthew 21 when the chief priests and elders were challenging him about his authority. He referred back to John the Baptist and he said to them the baptism of John from where was it from heaven or of men and they reasoned with themselves saying if we shall say from heaven he will say unto us why did you not then believe him but if we shall say of men we fear the people for all hold John as a prophet. So the chief priests and elders derived a lot of their authority from the people and so if the people were following John the Baptist and they opposed John the Baptist and they didn't believe him okay there it is again they will lose their power over the people. So the chief priests and elders were definitely aware of John's message of repentance and many of them made up the Pharisees and Sadducees that were rebuked by John. But again as Jesus points out the problem is that they didn't believe John the Baptist so again the message was about believing. So in summary when John the Baptist said repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand he was compelling people to believe in the Christ that he was preaching that would come after him. Matthew 21 32 and Acts 19 for prove that to be the case anybody who argues against this and still insist that it was a repentance from sin must presumably think they're smarter than both Jesus and Paul. Now there is one more thing to be addressed though what about the bring forth fruits meet for repentance. Well as this video is already getting too long I'll address this in the next video. We will look at what are John the Baptist's fruits worthy of repentance. This is no nonsense Christianity reminding you that nowhere in the Bible does it say repent of your sins to be saved.